Took a quick run to Target, Tuesday. Little known fact: Target has the best generic grease resistant paper plates in my area, right now. Anyway, I gravitated over to the music section and found a few exclusives I didn't know about.

First, there's the album that bears the name and image of Ellen Degeneres. I've known about that one and its been on the List, but its basically a compilation of stuff most visitors here would already have. Older tracks from Stevie Wonder and the Ronettes. Newer stuff from Lady Gaga and Coldplay. In fact, the most notable thing about the album is the terrific joke of the title: "Ellen's The Only Holiday Album You'll Ever Need.........Volume 1". That's a good giggle, but that's about all.

The biggie, I think was "Christmas With Nashville". We reported on that project a long, long time ago. I had wondered what became of it and people on the TV show's Fan forums thought I made the whole thing up. Eventually, Amazon had a listing for an Import and, more recently, the digital download. But I was scratching my head over the domestic CD version. Mystery solved; the hard copy CD is a Target exclusive. The track order is different than that we originally reported, but, otherwise, it is what we thought it was. Pick up "Christmas With Nashville" in store or online.

It was also a bit of a surprise to see the Vamps debut album in a Deluxe version. Once again, it was a very long time ago we reported that The Vamps had recorded several Christmas songs. At the time, at least, the songs were only available digitally and in Great Britain. As "Meet The Vamps" is finally getting its stateside release (and here it is Christmas time), Target scored an exclusive coup (of sorts). The Target version of "Meet The Vamps" includes 3 of the new Vamps holiday tunes, "Jingle Bells", "Hoping For Snow" and "We Wish You A Merry Christmas". Typical Boy Band mayhem ensues.

Target also has an exclusive version of the Dave Koz holiday record, "The 25th of December" with 2 bonus tracks, but my Target didn't have that one. And I see there's a Deluxe version of Frank Sinatra's"A Jolly Christmas" which includes a bonus DVD of the infamous Bing Crosby/Frank Sinatra Christmas special, but I'm not sure if that's new at Target or a carry over from past years. In any case, we will update our List accordingly with all these exclusives. We now return you to The Holiday Season, already in progress.

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I love Christmas, music, and cats. What more do you need to know?Anyone wishing to contact Stubby's for any reason may do so by emailing:​info@stubbyschristmas.com.Artists and labels, please be aware that my webmail is broken (I can receive but not send). Any reply from me will come from my personal email (which I will not list here for the spam-bots to find). I apologize for any hassle or inconvenience this may cause.Readers should assume that any item reviewed on this site has been provided by the artist or label in exchange for promotional consideration, whether or not that is actually the case. If you are the copyright holder for any song or image appearing here and wish that item to be removed, please let me know via email and I will remove it forthwith. My intentions are to inform and interest people in your work, so that they might purchase it; not to provide anyone a way to avoid doing so.